Archive for Media Obsession

In Dubai, some will have noticed that the media fuelled Jade Goody phenomenon has permeated our consiousness. In fact, there are seemingly very few spots in the world which have not been sucked in to this very sad story about the slightly intellectually challenged girl from a poor area in the east end of London. Micheal Jackson apparently left a voicemail message for her, prior to her death on Sunday morning.

The obssession with Jade Goody stands out from our more innocent adulation of the stars of today. I can understand, the Bragelina or Paris Hilton thing. People will lose themselves in OK, Ahlan, TMZ in order to create a fantasy to liven up lives which can become both mundane and uninspiring. For those moments when you’re reading the glossy mag you can imagine being that beautiful, that rich, that popular.

The interest in jade Goody is far more sinister. Jade was brought up by two drug addicted parents in the poorest area of London. Her mother is a lesbian and her father died of a drug overdose in 2006.
When Jade first appeared on the UKs Big Brother, she was ridiculed in the press because of her seemingly non existent knowledge of the outside world. When she made a racist remark on live telly she was descibed in the Sun as being ”a vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully”.

The obssesion with jade is not driven by an urge to aspire to be that person. Rather, the fascination is motivated by a kind of voyeristic attraction similar to the Victorian obsession with the elephant man. She was a freak that you could stare at, and then thank to the heavens that you weren’t like her. The last few days lying on her death bed were the final act of a show in which everyone tuned in to see the latest instalment of the morbid show. Her death brought down the curtain on a very revealing episode which says a lot about what the general public (particularly in the UK) are really driven by when immersing themselves in the worlds of celebrities.